Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new traffic automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish new content on a regular basis to automatically begin bringing new traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing as you begin publishing fresh content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as their greatest challenge online. With business becoming so much more competitive worldwide, it’s worth looking into every opportunity you can to get better results online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage. An expertly configured website gives you a flying start as soon as your website is launched.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to describe the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence and an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an anecdote.
A Semi-True Story …
All was going fine in the gizmo manufacturing plant when everything suddenly ground to a stop.
As no one could figure out what happened, the plant manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walked immediately towards the main control box. After staring at the board for no more than 5 minutes or so, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy hammer and made a gentle tap about one inch from the right-hand side of the box.
Immediately, the assembly line sprang back to life.
The plant manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received a request for payment of services rendered totalling $5,000.
The factory manager called the expert, demanding to know why they were charged such a large amount of money for less than five minutes work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic consistently to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for spending years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a website fully set up so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
While many experts often make difficult things look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to figure things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which services you need to set up and activate to achieve certain outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure to make sure everything will work as expected, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring a piece of software, tweaking some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration phase is a process that involves your server, your web site, and a number of third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these steps.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your web-hosting account that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your site may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these, the next step is to set up and configure a number of third-party sites and services.
Integration With External Solutions
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all content will get posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will be automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external platforms into your network, content pointing back to your site will get automatically syndicated to these platforms. Your site will then be exposed to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of the third-party web properties and online services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site to help save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful data, tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your Google Webmasters account and entering site details, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic results, SEO, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up Google Analytics, you can add traffic monitoring code to WordPress via plugins and send data instantly to other applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account and site data have been set up, the account details can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers users the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your social accounts set up in order to configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts set up with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(There are loads of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse website.
There are many different solutions you can incorporate into your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to get the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly notify all the update services you have specified in the Update Services field whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your articles, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks enable your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Plugins – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is immune from being hacked.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and bots.
Go here for more details:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your site with WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins allow you to specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress Traffic Theme Settings – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, many themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings and options for better traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Other Sections
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do any kind of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
To learn more about how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog, go here:
WordPress Post Categories & Tags
Post categories and tags help search engines better classify and index your pages, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s categories and tags should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits.
Add A Site Map
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap is code that only search engine bots can understand. Although search engines like Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page – Don’t Forget To Configure It!
When visitors searching online for your website type in the wrong URL into their web browser or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they will typically be greeted with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then to automatically begin bringing more web traffic is post new content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge required to perform this process typically takes some web developers months to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress-powered website and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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